There are others, too, but those were the ones I laughed about. Bread-winner! Attractive figure! Cleaning my house!

Another article titled “Such a Pretty Mother!” gave beauty advice.

Make it an undying, undeviating rule never to appear at the breakfast table in pin curls without a glamour bandeau to hide them. And always remember the lipstick, please, for a bright morning face! … No reason for your husband to hide behind his newspaper because his little helpmate presents so dowdy a picture over the breakfast coffee!

I stayed up until midnight reading through my new/old magazines. I went to sleep and let my brain ruminate over how things were 60 years ago.

Then I woke up in the morning and looked around my house. It’s not filthy in the sense that there’s rotting food or dirty diapers lying around, but I’m not sure I’d call it “neat, tidy, or fresh.” There are newspapers stacked on my retro-’50s table, a pile of clothes waiting to be folded in the corner of a bedroom, and toys strewn everywhere. I haven’t vacuumed or dusted in…a long time. We eat out a lot. My daily beauty regimen consists of showering (hopefully before noon), combing my hair, and applying Chapstick.

I thought about all the conveniences I have that women in the 1950s didn’t (or likely didn’t). Dishwasher. Clothes dryer. Microwave. Keurig. Disposable diapers. Internet shopping. A husband who doesn’t care if my hair is coiffed (and would probably laugh if it were).

I started to realize there’s really no excuse not to have a spic-and-span house. Yes, I have three kids, and yes, they take a lot of time (especially the one I’m homeschooling, which most ’50s moms wouldn’t have been doing). No, I’m not eating bonbons and watching soaps, but I’m not busting my butt scrubbing my baseboards either.

One article gave home-making tips for after baby arrives. One of the tips was to keep clean, wet laundry in the icebox until you have a chance to iron it. Holy shirt! I think I own an iron, but I couldn’t tell you where it is. Yet here I am writing a blog post instead of taking my clothes out of the dryer because I can just put it on touch-up later.

Then I began to wonder if it was all a myth. Maybe the typical 1950s mom wasn’t as Leave-it-to-Beaver as the magazines would have me believe. So I asked my grandma, who had her first child in 1952.

She said her house wasn’t immaculate, but it was always tidy. She did her hair every day. My grandpa was quick to add that there was always a full breakfast on the table (and for them, that means eggs, some sort of meat, toast, fruit, milk, juice–the works).

That didn’t help. My kids think toaster waffles are a luxury. It doesn’t matter, though, because right now a science project is obscuring my access to the toaster.

I really have no excuse for the not-put-away clothes and the not-put-away toys and the not-put-away-box-of-Saltines-from-when-my-daughter-was-sick-two-weeks ago.

I thought that after reading these magazines, I’d feel a sense of superiority, but instead I feel extremely inadequate. I’m pretty sure I would have failed the 1950s.

I was born in 1951 and was the 7th child. A lot of what you wrote about was true. However, we not only didn’t have internet, we didn’t have TV, telephone, or more than one car, so everything was home based. A lot of things about that simpler time were good, but I certainly would not want to give up my conveniences either.

And Mommy and Me didn’t exist yet, so you didn’t have all those pesky lessons and classes every day. And kids didn’t have “enrichment” like soccer, violin lessons, piano lessons, or gymnastics. And it was okay for kids to play in the street or with whatever loose wires and hand saws that were hanging around the basement.

And anyway, 50s moms usually didn’t drive, and there wouldn’t be a second car anyway, and kids rode around loose in the backseat, or in a box.

plus, back then you had your mom or mother in law who came and stayed for anywhere from a few days to a few MONTHS after you had a baby.

I remember my grandma said that when she had my mother, my great grandma was there for the first two months… when she had my uncle, my great grandpa had passed on and my great grandma and my great aunt (11yrs younger than my grandma) moved in with them for almost the whole first year. People, even if they moved away, didn’t typically move as far away from their parents as a lot of people do today… and yeah, houses were smaller.

Still, you had had “bread winners” who were more open minded and viewed it as a partnership… sure, my grandma (I remember this even when I was a kid) would get up every morning and have my grandpa’s breakfast ready and she was always looking nice, but even after he retired, my grandpa would help make or make dinner… like a big pot of soup where all grandma had to do was make sure it was okay and didn’t simmer over and he would have boiled the meat the night before…

He did almost all of the outdoor housework and house maintenance… she just didn’t have to worry about any of that.

And yeah, there weren’t second cars, there weren’t all these lessons and activities… kids got out of school and unless they had a music lesson or practice to keep them from coming home, they came home and once any homework was done, they were outside unless they had a part time job or were helping with the housework.

Surely women who couldn’t cook aren’t just a new invention of our generation? I mean, many days my dh comes home from slaving all day reading in his office and makes our dinner because I can’t come up with an idea of what to have (tonight notwithstanding). And keeping a clean house? I did chuckle at that one. I remember the good ol’ days from when my oldest was a toddler and we alternated where we had playgroup. That was probably the last time this house was consistently cleaned and dusted. We have this cool “museum” on the edge of town where the historical society has moved houses of various ages from turn of the century to mid-century and put them on display. Most of them fit entirely into my living room and family room space. It’s no wonder then that women from 60 years ago could vacuum and dust a house in a day and have a roast on the table at night while wearing lipstick, lol. I get exhausted vacuuming my gameroom!